Literature as History in Twelve Years a Slave and its Movie Adaptation

This paper tries to examine literature as history, with an emphasis on the crucial role of fiction in narrating the marginalized events of history. Some fictions are actual accounts of events in history, and some are reflection of events. Actually, literature and history are integrated to each other, in a way that, pure history which shows us the reality and truth is just a myth. The pens writing history are subjective, and subject to power. During the history power has been a factor to control many things, among them discourse and history. On the other hand, literature is not independent either, and it reflects the hue and colure of its era and history in more than one way. Notwithstanding the genre, the writers who produce literary texts are living in a determined history, in which some events are dominant. In other words, literary texts were written in a context that definitely affected writers’ mind. Twelve Years a Slave is a clear example of literature as a tantamount to history, since it seeks to express the ignored angles of history in literary language. This article examines the inseparability and complementarity of literature and history in Twelve Years of Slave and its film adaptation.